Mexican immigrant Sandra Villalobos' husband died in the West fertilizer plant blast in April, as she was trying to get a green card. Now she waits for answers while caring for her daugher, Mariana, 7, who has spina bifida. (Mona Reeder/Staff Photographer)

The Toll

West immigrant in mourning, in limbo

Sandra Villalobos’ husband died in the blast as she was trying to get a green card

Written byJULIETA CHIQUILLO | STAFF WRITER

Photography byMONA REEDER | STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

Published October 29, 2013

When Sandra Villalobos left her home here in February to go to Mexico, the plan was to return with her 11-year-old daughter, who had been raised there, and a green card.

She brought her disabled 7-year-old daughter, Mariana, with her. Villalobos’ husband accompanied them for a short time and returned to West. In three months, Villalobos hoped, they would all reunite in the United States.

The plan was to live here legally as an ordinary family of four, splurging on McDonald’s after Mass, dressing up for quinceañeras.

On April 17, that dream was shattered.

The West fertilizer plant explosion killed Villalobos’ husband, Mariano Saldivar, 57, along with 14 others. It destroyed the family’s apartment and the white Chevy sedan they had paid off in December.

Then came another blow. When Saldivar died, the approved green-card petition for his wife was automatically revoked.

Now Villalobos’ quest for legal status, a difficult process even under the best circumstances, has become tangled in red tape.

“In the immigrant community, people know that this is complicated, and there’s no guarantee, and things could go wrong at any time,” said Karen Crawford, Villalobos’ attorney. “Of course, she had no idea how wrong it was going to go.

“Nobody would have seen this coming.”

Borrowed time

The 33-year-old mother came back to the U.S. in August on humanitarian parole, a temporary protection.

On school day afternoons, Villalobos sits in the living room of a modest West house where she’s staying with relatives. What’s left of her own home — a plastic bin filled with photo albums — is stashed in a closet.

She waits on borrowed time for papers that might not come.

A West ISD bus delivers Mariana to her mother after school. Before the blast, her father was the one who unloaded the girl’s little wheelchair covered in Dora the Explorer stickers.

Mariana, who is repeating first grade, was born with spina bifida, a congenital defect that paralyzed her from the waist down. She has no bowel or bladder control.

Mariana is an American citizen by birth. She depends on Villalobos for survival, but as a minor, she can’t request a green card for her caregiver.

Villalobos’ older daughter, Karen, is still in Mexico. That’s where Villalobos said she would be if she could. But what future would Mariana have there?

“I adapt to any life there, but she can’t,” Villalobos said in Spanish.

Mariana Saldivar holds a picture of her father, who used to drive her to medical appointments. "She's blocked right now" about her father's death, her mother says. (Mona Reeder/Staff Photographer)

A better life

In 2005, Villalobos, then a single mother, came to the United States after deciding to take up Saldivar’s offer to help her. Seeking a better life, she asked her mother to look after Karen and ventured across the Rio Grande with a smuggler.

Mariana was born in Fort Stockton in January 2006. The girl was the witness at her parents’ surprise courthouse wedding on Valentine’s Day of that year.

The couple wore jeans. There was no money for a ring.

“I owe it to you,” Saldivar told his wife.

But there was something else he could give her. Saldivar offered to request a green card for Villalobos. He was a legal permanent resident, but she could be deported any day.

Villalobos said no. Husband and wife were 25 years apart in age, and people were already talking about her motives. She didn’t want to validate rumors.

The family moved to West five years ago. Saldivar’s health was sliding. Arthritis plagued him. The family relied on his disability benefits to pay bills.

By last fall, Saldivar had lost 50 pounds. Sometimes he didn’t want to get out of bed. But he had finally convinced Villalobos about the green card. He told her that Karen could come to the U.S. through the same petition. He urged Villalobos to think about Mariana, too.

“At this age, if something happens to me, what about the girl?” Saldivar told his wife.

Immigrant visas

The couple scraped together $4,000 by borrowing from family. In 2010, Saldivar petitioned for a green card for Villalobos that would also benefit his stepdaughter, Karen.

The petition was approved, and immigrant visas became available this year. In February, Villalobos traveled to Ciudad Juarez for processing at the American Consulate.

Because she had been in the U.S. illegally, she applied for a waiver of inadmissibility, stating that being denied entry would impose “extreme hardship” on her husband. The approval rate for waivers filed abroad was 88 percent last year, according to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

“My only crime is entering here illegally,” she said. “I have not robbed; I have not killed.”

Waiver processing can take about six months. By April, the delay became more frustrating as Mariana weakened from urinary tract infections.

Villalobos updated her husband in West on the phone daily, but on April 17, he didn’t pick up. She called his friends and relatives, who told her about the blast. His son Saul Saldivar flew from Oregon to find him.

Two days after the explosion, Mexican foreign affairs officials confirmed Saldivar’s death.

“My world fell on me,” Villalobos said.

U.S.-born Mariana Salvidar, 7, will undergo surgery to repair her left hip and right knee and has gone from being independent in a walker to dependent on her mother. (Mona Reeder/Staff Photographer)

Back in West

After Saldivar’s death, Villalobos was briefly let back into the country for his funeral. Then in mid-August, she was granted permission to return to West. She can remain as long as her green-card application is being processed.

A recent federal policy allows people like Villalobos to ask for reinstatement of a green-card petition under certain criteria. She has to prove she resided in the U.S. when her husband died and that she continues to live here while seeking relief.

On Thursday, Mariana will undergo surgery in Fort Worth to repair her left hip and right knee. The girl’s longtime therapists said she had regressed significantly during her stay in Mexico.

“She went from being independent in her walker to depending on her mother,” said Laneé Teer, a physical therapist for Providence Healthcare Network in Waco.

When Mariana returned, she couldn’t prop herself on her wheelchair, dress herself or stand with support.

During a recent session in Waco, Teer and Mariana straddled a long, padded bolster with ropes hanging at each end, like a swing. Teer asked Mariana to stretch out her arms for 10 seconds. It was an exercise to improve her balance.

Occupational therapist Debbie Haddad slid toward her on a rolling stool and spread her own arms.

“Como un pajarito,” Haddad said: Like a little bird.

Two hours later, mom and daughter waited on the curb outside Woodway Medical Plaza for a public van to take them back to West. Previously, Saldivar had driven them to every appointment.

The minutes crawled by. Nearly an hour after therapy ended, they were still waiting.

“If he were here, this wouldn’t happen,” Villalobos said.

Uncertain future

Mariana saw her father’s body in the casket. She placed flowers on his chest. But she tells her mother that man wasn’t her daddy.

Josephine Miller, a West resident who viewed Saldivar as her own son, has driven Villalobos to West Long Term Recovery Center and translated for her. They’ve given her gift cards and furniture.

“She’s a special person,” Miller said. “I wish I could do more.”

Villalobos considers the things she’ll do if she receives the green card: Bring Karen to West, find her own place, get a driver’s license, take English lessons.

Ask Villalobos what she’ll do if the green card doesn’t come through, though, and anguish creeps into her face.

“I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t know what I’ll do.”■

Sandra Villalobos and her daughter, Mariana, 7, look through family photos that were pulled from rubble of an apartment complex devastated in the West fertilizer plant explosion. The photos and a few other small mementos are all they had left after the blast. (Mona Reeder/Staff Photographer)